The removal of entrained gases from liquids is an important exercise in a variety of manufacturing and/or analytical processes. An example process in which liquid degassing is widely utilized is in liquid chromatography applications. The presence of dissolved gases can be undesirable in such applications, wherein the presence of dissolved gases interferes with the functionality or accuracy of the application.
In the case of liquid chromatography, for example, dissolved gases in chromatographic mobile phase can manifest itself in the form of bubbles, which can cause noise and drift in the chromatographic detector. Moreover, the existence of gas bubbles can cause erroneous absorption signatures at the detector.
Many other liquid supply applications rely upon degassed liquids in order to achieve and preserve consistent and high quality results. Such applications include, for example, ink delivery systems such as in ink-jet printers, semi conductor wafer manufacturing processes, and pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Gas infiltration into liquid feed stocks may originate from a variety of sources. For example, liquid supply reservoirs and pipelines are not typically maintained under sealed conditions, and are therefore sources of liquid feed stock gasification. While many systems for degassing liquids have been developed and implemented, such systems have not heretofore been manufactured to a capacity and performance specifically tailored to meet the needs of a particular degassing application. More typically, degassing systems have traditionally been configured to ensure minimum degassing performance by being “over-sized” with respect to the infeed liquid flow rate and the extent of degassing required. In doing so, however, functioning elements of the degassing system are typically not utilized to their full potential. Such unused capacity may incur significant unnecessary expense and degassing system size requirements, which sizing requirements can prevent advantageous degassing system size reductions in, for example, analytical system componentry.
Accordingly, it is a principle object of the present invention to provide a method for degassing a fluid, which method involves the use of a degassing module that is specifically configured to meet the needs of a particular degassing application.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a degassing module in a degassing system that is adapted to provide only the necessary performance in a particular degassing application.